Art is our resilience. Experimentation is our queerly colored history. From the explosion of energy during the Harlem Renaissance, to the poetry carved in the walls of Angel Island, to revolutionary self-love, these films juxtapose the legacies that we inherit alongside the spaces we carve out for ourselves today.

Weds, Nov 14th at 7pm. Tickets $12

EXPLODING LINEAGE! FILMS:

HOKUM subverts the gaze by asking, ‘what does it mean to take pleasure in viewing the Black female body?’ WEEP WILLOW: THE BLUES FOR LADY DAY reveals the chilling biography of Billie Holiday and the emotional landscape behind her voice. The energy and brilliance of the Queer Harlem Renaissance shines in BULLDAGGER WOMEN AND SISSY MEN. Nostalgia mixes with QUEER ORIGINS to create experimental animation, and electric 60’s choreography abounds in FREE JAZZ. Continuing legacies, I KNOW MY SOUL, based on a poem by Claude McKay, proves that the way to self-love is through self-knowledge. HOMESCHOOL is a lyrical exploration of the forced assimilation of a Korean adoptee. FAN CHRISTY reinterprets Faen Christy, reclaiming culture via karaoke. Looking to the past, BLOODLINES is an experimental ode to immigrants detained on Angel Island during the Chinese Exclusion Act. ERZULIE’S TEARS are haunting, and saturated by the spirit of the Haitian Voudoun goddess of love. FML explores the pleasurable lament of failure, discontent, and loss in creating the hyper racial and gendered self on stage. Honoring our ancestors, NO LEGACY LET GO takes a snapshot of Queer Harlem through the stories of Imani Rashid, translating them into poetic and musical form. RENAISSANCE REDUX continues the testimony of Harlem Elders through the words of G-pop and Nana. Closing the evening, IN MY OWN HANDS proves that every second of joy is a revolution.

ABOUT MIX NYC:

Since 1987, MIX NYC has presented the latest in queer experimental film and previously unseen works from legendary lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other queer- identified figures in avant-garde cinema. www.mixnyc.org

FILMMAKER BIOS:

Dr. K. Ryan Ziegler is an award-winning filmmaker and scholar. His work has screened across the United States and in countries such as England, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, Israel, and The Netherlands. Dr. Ziegler completed his doctoral dissertation in African American Studies from Northwestern University. Dr. Ziegler’s feature-length documentary titled, STILL BLACK: A Portrait of Black Transmen, is the first and only experimental documentary to explore the lives of black transgender men in the United States. The film has received multiple awards, including the Isaac Julien Experimental Award from Queer Black Cinema International Music Festival and the Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary in the 2009 ReelOut Queer Film + Video Festival. STILL BLACK has shown to sold-out crowds in places such as Los Angeles, New York, Montreal, Toronto, San Francisco, The Netherlands, London, Seattle, Chicago, and Tel-Aviv.

Indira Allegra is a poet and interdisciplinary artist imagining narratives through performance, video and fiber arts. Her experimental video poem, Blue Covers, has screened internationally. Indira has contributed work to Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature, winner of the Silver Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards and ForeWord Book of the Year Award. She has published work in the Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought, Konch Magazine, Wordgathering Journal of Disability Poetry and Make/Shift Magazine among others. Indira is artistic director for Artists Against Rape and a former member of the artistic core of Sins Invalid. She is a Lambda Literary Fellow, a Banff Centre Writer and a Voices Of Nations Arts Alum. She is currently working on her first collection of poems, Indigo Season. indiraallegra.com

KB Boyce is also known as TuffNStuff: Drag King of the Blues. Ze is the love child of Eartha Kitt and Howlin’ Wolf. TuffNStuff has performed at venues ranging from SF Pride, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Brown University, Transgiving, Fresh Meat, and University of Oregon. Gay.com writes, “TuffNStuff: Drag King/Blues Man dazzles the crowd…performing both original tunes and blues classics while burning up the guitar with slide and finger picking.” Singer/songwriter TuffNStuff is dedicated to bringing the legacy of gender bending Blues to our community. TuffNStuff aka KB Boyce is the co-founder of Queer Rebels Productions. www.kingtuffnstuff.com

Celeste Chan creates work born from queer Diaspora through wit, words, and film. A VONA fellow, she has presented her art at: Vancouver Queer Film Festival in B.C., National Queer Arts Festival and Queer Women of Color Film Festival in SF, and Rebel Cupcake in NY, among others. She is co-founder of Queer Rebel Productions (queerrebels.com) and a Board Member of Community United Against Violence (cuav.org). www.celestechan.com

Brontez Purnell is a writer (Fag School, Maximum Rock n Roll) and musician (Younger Lovers, Gravy Train!!!). Most recently, he toured the country with Sister Spit, readings excerpts from his novella-in-progress. He presented “Free Jazz” with his experimental jazz company, Brontez Purnell Dance, at the Berkeley Art Museum this past February to rave reviews.

Gary Fembot Gregerson was born 1965 in the flatlands of Illinois. Moved to the “hill country” in 1989. A late bloomer, since 1991, he has been making up for lost time by learning how to play music in bands (Sta-Prest, Feelings on a Grid, Swishin’ Duds, Mon Cousin Belge, Puce Moment), performing in underground theater (Sick and Twisted Players), dj’ing, writing zines, and producing short films. He began releasing his zine Fembot in the early 1990’s.

Jerry Lee Abram began his career in the Queer Arts back in 2000 working on The Transfused Rock Opera in Olympia, WA. He helped co-found Homo-A-Gogo in 2002 and has since Tech Directed and Program Directed that festival. He has also designed lights and toured with the Dr. Frockrocket Show in 01, Tech Directed the Nomy Lamm Effigy Tour 03, and Tech Directed The Sex Workers Art Show Tour 02-08. Since moving to San Francisco in 2005 Jerry Lee has kept himself busy doing just about anything for local queer artists. Favorite projects include lighting music videos by Hunx and His Punx and The Younger Lovers, working with Sins Invalid, K’vetch, Peaches Christ, and Formerly Known As, and Queer Rebels of the Harlem Renaissance. He has some good stories to tell.

After living in Berlin, Germany for 9 years, Crystal Mason returned to San Francisco to work for 11/2 years as the Executive Director at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts. In 2008 she co-created and produced video for the multimedia theater piece Hey, Sailor. Her last project in Berlin was a two-year long European Union funded film project dealing with multi-dimensional discrimination faced by lesbians of color and immigrant lesbians in Berlin. From 1997-2001 she also co-owned and operated Schoko Café, a women’s art and culture center. In San Francisco from 1989-1995 Crystal was an AIDS activist and organizer working with ACT UP and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in the Women’s and Children’s Program. From 1993-1995 she was the co-founder and co-artistic director of Luna Sea Women’s Performance Space. Crystal was also a regular behind the scenes and in front of the camera on Electric City Queer TV for several years.

So Yung Kim is an Oakland-based femme of color whose writing and activism focus on adoptee of color politics and movement-building.

Jai Arun Ravine is a text-based artist working in film/video, movement and performance. They are the author of a book of experimental poetics, AND THEN ENTWINE (Tinfish Press, 2011) and the creator of a short film on Thai trans-masculinities, TOM/TRANS/THAI (2011). Learn more at www.jaiarunravine.wordpress.com.

Jorrit Poelen projects distorted, noisy collages of animated images onto skin, screen, wall and floor using “Pooks”, a custom-built visual instrument. Jorrit has collaborated with (experimental) musicians/performers/dancers since 2003. Recent works include “Vindicated Violence” by Mr Ri’s Deceptively Strong Dance Project (the Garage, San Francisco, June 2012), “No Reservations” in collaboration with Jai Arun Ravine (SOMArts, San Francisco, May 2012) and “Seconds Flatter” in collaboration with [moos] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSwnIv_a0WE). For more info see http://skinnylongarmguy.appspot.com.

M.A. Brooks creates textured landscapes of movement/gesture/text and is interested in reconstructing cultural memories from black, queer and colonized histories. In San Francisco, M.A. has been dancing with aerial dance company, Fly Away Productions, since 2009 and in June of 2010 was granted a Djerassi choreographer’s residency. M.A. also organizes with Dirtstar! Take Root, featuring radical perspectives on queer sustainability.

Xandra Ibarra is a Bay Area based performer that performs under the alias of La Chica Boom. You can catch her making tacos with her panties, giving birth to hitachi wands, and dominating piñatas at gay bars, theaters, museums, and nightclubs throughout the country. Her work ranges from short acts to full-length escandalos, includes original costuming, and pushes sexual and racial boundaries. La Chica Boom’s special brand of burlesque and ethnic drag have been showcased at The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (SF), ACT Theater (SEA), and the Burlesque Hall of Fame (Las Vegas) to name a few.

Rob Fatal is a media scholar, filmmaker, performer and sound artist from Oakland, California whose work investigates the concepts of narrative and categorization as they pertain to identity construction and human communication. He is currently pursuing dual degrees: an MA in Communication Studies at Sacramento State University and an MFA in Fine Arts at California College of the Arts. Fatal’s films and video art have been screened nationally in film festivals and galleries and his academic, critical and short fiction writings have been published in academic journals and online magazines.

Julia Wallace creates media and art intended to heal and transform. Julia is a multimedia consultant, filmmaker, musician, composer, theologian, founder of Queer Renaissance, a multimedia movement based on the premise that we can create the world anew, and co-creator of Black Feminist FIlm School and Mobile Homecoming, a national intergenerational experiential archive project that amplifies generations of Black LGBTQ brilliance by using multimedia and building intergenerational family of choice across time and space. Julia also served as composer and producer for poet Yolo Akili’s album Purple Galaxy. Julia has also been featured in the Advocate magazine top 40 under 40 list, the Colorlines Ten Leaders Building a New LGBT Politics in the South and Midwest list, bitch magazine (twice in 2012) and an upcoming issue of GLQ (Gay and Lesbian Quarterly: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies).

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black feminist troublemaker from Durham, North Carolina. Alexis is the founder of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind educational program and the co-creator of the Mobile Homecoming experiential archive, amplifying generations of LGBTQ Black brilliance. Alexis earned her PhD in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies from Duke University in 2010 and is widely published in national print and online publications and scholarly journals. Alexis was named one of UTNE Reader’s 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009, a Black Women Rising Nominee and a Reproductive Reality Check Shero in 2010, a recipient of the Too Sexy for 501C-3 trophy in 2011 and one of the Advocate’s top 40 under 40 in 2012.

Oriana Bolden is a documentary filmmaker based in Hawaii. Her current cinematic work is centered on alternatives to incarceration, visions of climate justice, interdependence and the beauty of complexity. In 2005, Oriana started a freelance production company and its not- for-profit community media production hub, proj-ectPRO:JECT (www.reelchange.org). Oriana’s work has screened in film festivals around the world, as well as been optioned by and featured regularly on Free Speech TV (Dish Network Channel 9415). For well over 10 years, Oriana has facilitated powerful media by teaching and/or producing media with students and activists from Oakland to Johannesburg and beyond. Oriana believes that communication is a Human Right. For more information about Oriana and proj-ectPRO:JECT please visit: www.projectprojecting.com/about/oriana-bolden/ and https://vimeo.com/projectproject